Wired for Genius and
Success, but Not Politics

By

Holman W. Jenkins Jr.

Updated Feb. 14, 2001 12:01 a.m. ET

I n the mid-1990s, a handful of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs decided they could use their wealth and infinite knowledge to take over the Democratic Party. The idea was to empower pro-business, pro-competition "New" Democrats and drive into the wilderness old constituencies, like the trial lawyers and big labor, who'd been calling the shots for years.

On any level this was a bad bet, as Sara Miles shows in her engaging "How to Hack a Party Line " (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 246 pages, $24). But you have...